Can I take a deposit from my customer and collect the rest of the money closer to travel?

Yes, in most setups you can take a deposit first and collect the balance later, but how far you can take it depends on what you are selling and on your payment gateway.

The easiest case is anything where you control the inventory, such as your own hotel contracts, tour packages, holiday itineraries or bookings you have made directly with a supplier. Because you decide when the supplier needs to be paid, you can ask the customer for part of the money now and the rest before departure. Live API bookings work differently. When a flight is ticketed or a hotel is confirmed through a supplier connection, that supplier normally wants to be paid in full at the moment of confirmation, so a deposit only works there if you are willing to cover the difference yourself until the customer settles up, or if you hold the booking as a quote and only confirm it once the full amount is in.

On the portal side, a part payment usually means the booking is recorded with an amount paid, an amount still owing and a due date, so you and your staff can see at a glance which files are not fully settled. Whether your customers can come back and pay the balance themselves through a link, or whether you take that second payment over the phone, depends on your gateway and on your plan, so it is worth confirming rather than assuming.

Before you advertise deposits to customers, check with us which of your product types can be set up for part payment and ask your payment provider whether it supports follow up payments on the same booking.